Hello

[Amie]

This is designed to help you find your way around ConenctChat easily and to guide you through all the tools and features here.

My Controls
You will find the link to My Controls in the sidebar on the left and at the right had side of the toolbar at the top. This takes you to a portal - your mini home page, if you like - from where you can send messages to other members, read messages sent to you, edit your profile information, add a signature and avatar, and change your email address, amongst other things. There is also a notepad where you can store bits of infomration/writing/links that you may want to use, for example.

---The PM System
There is a button with each post that says 'PM' on it. If you click on it, a screen will appear where you can write a message to that user. They can do the same for you as well. It works much like an email system.
To check your inbox, click on the link in the sidebar or the toolbar at the top. Then simply click on any new messages to read them.
There is also a link in My Controls to your Inbox and Sentbox, and a link to Compose a New Message. This is in the top left.

---Editing Your Profile
So that people can get to know a bit more about you, on your profile page, you can tell us your interests, occupation, age, date of birth, home town/county/country, and a personal photo. You can also put information about your own websites and forums here too.
To edit your profile, click on the Edit My Profile Link in My Controls. Then simply write what you want, under the correct headings.

---Editing Your Signature
Your signature is an image, a link, or some writing that automatically appears at the end of every one of your posts. To add/edit your signature click on Edit My Signature in My Controls. A preview of your signature will appear, with a box below for you to enter what you want there. If you want an image, you must upload your picture to a host like photobucket, then post the link in img tags. Once you've added your signature, click Update and check it in the preview box.
Please do not let your signatures stretch the screen. It is incredibly annoying when viewing a topic if you have to scroll across, and it also makes a page take longer to load.

---Avatars
Your avatar is a picture that appears below your user name in all your posts. To get an avatar, there are three different ways to go about it:

AVATAR INFORMATION COMING SOON. WE ARE CURRENTLY EXPERIENCING SOME AVATAR PROBLEMS.

You can remove an avatar, by clicking, Remove Avatar.

Navigation
On the main page - which is called the Board Index - there are different Categories, such as Books and Entertainment. Under each Catergory heading, you will see the different Forums within that Catergory, such as Teenage Fiction and Film. When you click on a Forum, you will see a list of topics that are part of that Forum, and in some cases SubForums, like in the TV sections. Every Catargory and Forum is listed in the Board Index, so jsut scroll down to find what you want.

---View New Posts
So that you don't have to look in every topic, you can use the View New Posts tool, to see what else has been posted since you last clicked. This tool is in the top right of the each page.
There is a link at the top of the list of new posts that allows you to mark all topics as having been read.

---The Sidebar
This has links to your Control Panel, your Inbox, the Search Engine, and other useful quick links.

Forums/Topics
When you click on a Forum, a list of the topics in it will appear. To view a topic click it. Next to each topic name are some statisitics: the last person to post in it, the time of the last post, the number of replies, the number of views, and the person who started the topic.
Topics appear in a Forum by most recent post first. You can change this order with a tool on the topics list page.

Replying in Topics
It's really simple. Just click the Add Reply button which can be found at both the top and bottom of each topic. Type what you want to say into the box that appears and click Add Reply at the bottom.

---Quoting
If in your post you want to refer to a particular thing that somebody has said before you, whilst reading the topic click on the Quote button in a corner of that post. Then, where you click Add Reply, the quote will already be there, ready for you to type below it.
You can quote from other places too. For example, another topic, another site, or something you have read. You do this by copying/typing the text you want to quote, then highlighting it and clicking the quote button at the top of the reply box. This puts the text in quote tags.

---Formatting
Tags are used to format in posts. All this mean is that if you want something to be bold, you must put tags around it. So [ b ] text [/b] are the tags for writing in bold. You don't have to know the tags though, the ones you may need are at the top of the reply box. Just highlight the text you want to format, then click bold/italics/underline/img/font/colour/etc and the tags will be put in automatically.

---Attachments
You can add attachments from your computer to a post, like an image you want to show. To do this, look below the reply box to the section headed File Attachments. Click Browse, and this will take you to your own files. Select the one you want, and when you add your reply, the image will appear also.

---Emoticons
You can use emoticons in your post by typing the code for them or clicking the ones you want in the Post Icons section.

---Post Options
There are some options when posting. These are: Enable emoticons, enable signature and enable email notification of replies. These are automatically set to enabling both emoticons and signatures, as if you didn't want those, you wouldn't have them in the first place, but you can change this in each post if you wish. EMail notification is not enabled, but you can enable it if you want. It means that when someone replies in that topic, you will receive an email to tell you.

Online Users
AT the bottom of the main page, there is a section where you can see who is online when you are. It shows people who have clicked in the last 15 minutes.

Forum Statistics
You can see how many posts here have been, how many members we have, and the most users ever online by scrolling to the bottom of the main page. Other statistics are the Top Posters, the Top Ten Posters Per Day and the Top Topics Each Day. There are links to these in the sidebar.

Birthdays and Calendar Events
When it's someone's birthday, or the day of an event on our calendar, a reminder will appear at the bottom of the main page.


If there is any information you think is missing, please let me know by posting below.
If you have any questions, go to the Help Category (at the bottom) and create a topic in Any Problems or Questions?
Also, each Forum has it's own mini help manual at the top.

Amie

[abrasa]

Thanks Amie. It's pretty long, but it's worth it. Also is my signature too long? I realised that I really need that pic there-eventhough it's the same as my avatar.

This post has been edited by abrasa on Oct 15 2007, 02:52 AM

[littlehelper]

It's OK Jacin.

x
LHB